Limo Rentals

With the very stringent road safety rules that limit limousine carriage to just 8 people, it may be a good idea to consider only the standard stock limos from your limo rentals. At the top of range are your luxury sedans stretched only a few inches right out of the brand’s factory like those from BMW 7-series, the Maybach 62, the Rolls
Royce Phantom and Bentleys.

Then there are the standard SUVs and luxury sedans like standard Mercedes Benz and Volvo Sedans. If you need the roomier stretch limos, there are many standard stretch limos from Cadillac, Benzes and Lincolns, Just make sure they are not your super stretch Cadillacs and Lincolns or 4×4 SUVs and Hummers.

Legalities to Consider

Otherwise, if you simply must have a stretch 4×4 that almost always can seat more than 16 people, you need to check out some things from your prospective limousine operator. The most important of all is their license to operate under a valid PSV or Passenger Service Vehicle operator’s license.

This is now known as the PCV license or Passenger Carrying Vehicle license. About 50% of all limousines exceed the maximum 8-person seating capacity are being illegally operated as a PSV/PCV after getting registered with the DVLA without type approval as they could never pass the stringent COIF requirements.

In addition, getting them type-approved may be hindered by the fact that all these American limos are left-hand drives that are out of synch with the UK driving.

The problem lies in the COIF which require safety provisions to be incorporated in vehicles that can seat more than 8 person like the installation of alternative fire exit points, fire extinguishers and other passenger and road safety features that are estimated to cost limousine operations roughly ₤12,000 per limo. Unless, limo rentals comply, the law effectively pushes them out of business or run the risk of being impounded when used.

With the new mandate empowering the police and VOSA enforcers to impound limousines found violating the law, not a few limo rentals are forced to comply with the COIF requirements by providing conversions to their imported American stretch limos. The business is plainly quite promising as more people are finding these super stretch limos an excellent recreational and ego-boosting road presence.

There may in fact be some Hummers that already comply. With after-market conversion kits and specialty conversion shops that do limousine stretching; it shouldn’t be a problem retrofitting them for COIF type-approvals and thus provide the necessary PSV/PCV licenses for their operators.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Limo Rentals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.